Who can forget David Beckham on a speedboat careering up the River Thames with the Olympic torch blazing last year? But who knows that the maze of waterways he navigated to finally reach the Olympic stadium was a route devised by the Canal & River Trust?

Previously British Waterways, the Canal & River Trust only became a charity in July 2012 and is one of the newest charities in the UK. It manages 2,000 miles of waterways in England and Wales, and many of the waterways in and around the Olympic Park in the Lower Lea Valley are owned by the charity, including the River Lee Navigation, Hertford Union Canal, Limehouse Cut and Bow Creek.

The Canal & River Trust had been sprucing up the waterways in and around the Olympic Park since 2005 as part of a £60million regeneration and restoration programme. It wasn't just for the benefit of the millions of onlookers in summer 2012 – it is hoped there will be a legacy left behind for East End communities and the many boaters, walkers and cyclists who use them all year round.

The Olympics, and Beckham's grand entrance, was a glorious opportunity to showcase the canals, says Mark Blackwell, Lower Lea Valley & Olympics enterprise manager at the charity. Beckham's speedboat came in through Limehouse Basin, along the Limehouse Cut, turned right along the Bow Back River and the newly refurbished City Mills Lock to finally power alongside the Aquatics venue.

Blackwell says they met with the opening ceremony team in 2010 to discuss security issues for the last few miles of the torch relay along the waterway network.

"There were lots of rehearsals," he says, with colleagues choreographing the stunt in support boats. Complexities involved how to make a smooth transit through a lock – which can sometimes take 20 minutes – but in the end, the footage was recorded for television and the lock transits appeared seamless.

It's quite a change to the recent past. Immediately prior to the Olympics, the waterways in the area were non-functional, contaminated and blighted the landscape, says Blackwell. "Most times of the day, you wouldn't be able to navigate a boat out there," he says. "The towpaths were all cut-off and overgrown – and invasive plants, discarded tyres, fridges and rubble littered the area."

In 2006, it was agreed to lease the waterways within the Olympic Park to the London Development Agency so as not to break up the waterways from the national 2000 mile network, but instead, work with the Olympic Delivery Authority on the canals within the site. At the start of 2015, the charity will get back its waterways when they will take on the task of maintaining the newly cleaned-up canals and towpaths.

As well as advising the ODA, the charity worked both on the physical infrastructure and with local community groups, businesses, councils and volunteers, "with a view to that relationship continuing well beyond the games," says Blackwell.

"The Olympics was a boost in the arm to give this area of London a new lease of life, not just in the land but in the waterways that thread through it," he adds.

The new lease of life involved inspiring local people to use the canals, not just as visitors but getting actively involved as volunteers. Since 2006, the charity has run ad-hoc volunteer events recruiting over 1000 volunteers for Olympic-linked events. Now they attract at least 500 volunteers per year in London, up from 150 annually in 2009. Often they get cold-called by corporates who want to volunteer their staff.

Sam Thomas, maintenance manager, looks after the day-to-day running of the waterways as well as the volunteering engagement team. "We will identify something that we can't deliver with our own resources or additional enhancements such as putting a herb garden in as part of a public towpath," says Thomas.

In the year leading up to the Olympics, the charity ran towpath, canal clear-up and enhancement events attracting around 30 people per event.

One project near the Olympic site was on the canal stretch off Blaker Road. Once the charity had professionally dredged the canal and rebuilt the brickwork, it recruited 40 community volunteers – many residents from the local area – who over two days replanted the verges and, "put the cherry on the cake" says Thomas.

The charity has worked with volunteers to clear dross from hedgerows and tackle flytipping. They use boats, driven by staff, which allows life-jacketed volunteers to stand in the front hold, using grapple-hooks and long-handled litter pickers to collect rubbish from the water.

It has also collaborated with other charities or community groups such as Growing Concerns and Thames21 to clear canals and create enhancements. For instance, the Trust last year took part in London Mayor Boris Johnson's Big Waterways Clean Up, led by local London waterways charity, Thames 21, on rivers around the Olympic Park.

Apart from the Greater Tufted Boris, the pre-Olympics clean-up attracted other wildlife. Thomas says their ecologists worked closely with those from the Environment Agency on enhancements just south of the Olympic Park such as building sand martin nests – holes in the concrete riverbank walls – in riverbanks to encourage the birds. They also built floating rafts on which aquatic fowl could nest.

Other enhancements – which involved both corporate and community volunteers – included graffiti removal and prevention, and replacing flytipped blights with rockeries and herb gardens.

However, it hasn't all been plain sailing. Blackwell says that initially, "we got a little bit frustrated with the Olympic master-planners," because, "they didn't make the most of using the waterways". There had been concerns that the canals could be a security risk both from terrorism and drowning, he says, "and it took a long time (three years) to reach agreement on how to make use of the water".

The trust would have liked to see water taxis shuttle visitors around, or possibly for people to hire rowing boats or canoes in between events to explore the park, but this did not materialise as envisaged. However, Olympic visitors did enjoy the water from the canal banks and by having a close up view of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee barge, The Gloriana.

"Nonetheless, jointly with the ODA we've achieved great things for the Olympic waterways and the legacy is as good as we could have expected," says Blackwell.

There are plans that in the future, trip operators will be able to make trip boats available and they're working with the London Legacy Development Corporation to explore how the area can be opened up for narrowboats, canoes, rowing boats and even punts.